


Imitation

by AstronautSquid



Series: Stages of Appreciation [2]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Coping Mechanisms, Domesticity, Fluff, James Flint is Not Smooth, M/M, Most Menacing Armchairs, Oral Sex, Pirate Kink, Roleplay, Unsatisfactory Libraries, but he tries, failed attempts at seduction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-10-31 18:28:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10904973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstronautSquid/pseuds/AstronautSquid
Summary: In battle he was clear-headed and footsure.Faced with Thomas' request for a taste of Flint, James felt anything but.





	Imitation

**Author's Note:**

> did anyone ask for reckless domesticity, oodles of angst and a hearty dose of porn? because that's what you're getting. 
> 
> also, this whole endeavour is growing an actual bit of slow-burning plot and stuff. strap yourselves in.
> 
> please bear with my wanton abuse of history re: the US library system. i'm taking liberties because the show also foregoes accuracy in favour of a good story where necessary. Bethlem really did subject inmates to "rotational therapy," but not until long after Thomas' imprisonment.

 James dipped a finger into the cup at Thomas' elbow and earned himself words of half-hearted admonishment.

"It's cold," he replied plainly. "Which I knew it would be, because you haven't touched it in almost an hour. You've just been sighing over your work."

Thomas frowned and leant back in his chair. He gratefully accepted the hands that came to rest on his shoulders, working gently to remove the tension.

"You're stuck?" James guessed. The shoulders beneath his hands twitched in a non-commital shrug.

"Just tired," Thomas replied. "And I should like some more dictionaries for cross-referencing, I'm not sure about some of these phrases within the context of..."

He trailed off on a moan of hearty relief when James' fingers found a particularly tenacious knot in his muscles. James smiled.

"Sounds to me as if you're in need of a break. And a visit to the library."

James was surprised when Thomas looked even more disgruntled at that suggestion.

"The next decently-sized library is half a day's ride away." Thomas turned plaintive eyes to James. "And have you  _seen_  the inventory they keep? Apparently they lost many of their books in a fire - you know how the old inn next door is still as much soot as brick? And most of the donations to rebuild the library were organised by the local church, encouraging the populace to read the Bible. It's a veritable Herculean trial, finding a scientific text in that place! There's the odd classic, of course, and some scattered novels, but..."

He trailed off with a dissatisfied twist of his lips. James let his hands slide forward, crossing his forearms over Thomas' chest, and rested his forehead on the crown of Thomas' head.

"Well, if you need to work out some of those frustrations..." He pressed a kiss into blond hair and stepped back, releasing Thomas. "I'll be in bed."

Thomas huffed a soft laugh. "I'll take a little while longer."

James raised his hands innocently as he walked backwards towards the bedroom.

"Suit yourself," he said. "Just know that I'm not getting any younger and will certainly be in Morpheus' sweet embrace before too long, left all to myself."

He heard Thomas' answering snicker as James crossed the threshold. "Should I be worried that you're talking about other men's embraces?"

"Should you?" James called back and left the door open just a crack as he began to undress for bed.

\----

Back in London, Thomas had always been nothing if not full of surprises where their coupling was concerned. For a man so finely-dressed and outwardly proper, he had been remarkably knowledgable of all sorts of acts that still made James blush to think about. And while James himself had been no stranger to the various depravities that sodomites might get up to – his time in the Navy had provided him with a handful of opportunities – Thomas had always gone about them as nonchalantly as if he were expressing his fondness for a work of literature or the merits of some policy.

Once, James had made the mistake of teasing Thomas about the number of tassels on his coat, pointing out what a preening peacock his lover was. Over the course of the following week, Thomas had insisted James make him come once for every last goddamn tassel on the offensive garment before he finally deemed the insult repaid and unbuttoned James' breeches for the first time in days.

James hadn't seen him like that since London.

Mischievous, hungry, affectionate, devastatingly clever, yes; but never with that same air of quiet sovereignty. Thomas had eventually started to let slip remarks about the handful of years he had been forced to spend at Bethlem before being spirited away to the colonies. James felt sickly voyeuristic requesting details of the abuse Thomas had suffered, and so he didn't dig further and took what he was given, offering comfort when Thomas was in the mood to have it.

Sometimes James wanted to despair at the myriad small things that had changed about Thomas, the cracks and chips. The new textures that didn't manage to distort the greater shape but left undeniable reminders that the world had shown no mercy in allotting him his share of cruelty to endure. Then James remembered that he himself had changed just as much, and that his ways of shouldering his burden had merely taken a different form. Had he not witnessed the slow accumulation of his scars, would his own past self have recognized the man he was underneath them, weary and bruised?

The way Thomas moved was different; imperceptible if one hadn't watched his every gesture, his every weight shift as eagerly as James had, back when his eyes had first drunk their fill in London.

There now was a certain flightiness to those broad shoulders, as if they had gotten too used to flinching away.

When turning abruptly to face something with his entire body, Thomas' hand now instinctively sought the comfort of a solid surface, almost comically deliberate in his movements - except it wasn't comical at all, because James had put together the vague hints of therapeutic spinning sessions Thomas had been subjected to at Bethlem, inducing supposedly curative vomiting.

One of Thomas' elbows looked as if it had been fractured and set wrong, and he had confessed that a line of numbness traced down from the deformity all the way into his little finger. A finger didn't bend quite the way it used to, and three of his hindmost teeth were missing, which James had discovered when his tongue had first explored more deeply.

A week after they had moved in James had first stumbled upon one of Thomas' stashes.

Rarely food, sometimes clothes – or anything soft and made of fabric, really -, most often just pretty nothings he had collected around the house or in town or outdoors, pins and half-broken stones and cutlery and scraps of trim, stuffed in cupboards and under loose floorboards and atop shadowed ceiling beams.

As long as he lived, James was never going to forget Thomas' expression of abject horror when he had walked in on James kneeling in front of the bed, holding a small box he had discovered while looking for a dropped coin. The torn buttons from several of James' shirts, half a dozen spoons, a broken ink pen and an empty glass vial had spilled from James' fingers and clattered with obscene loudness to the floor.

Thomas' face had burnt with humiliation and barely-suppressed fury once he had overcome his initial shock.

It had been their first row this side of a decade, although it wasn't much of a row at all. A row required at least one party to be angry with the other. Thomas' outburst was wretchedly directionless.

James had willed himself to be the rocky promontory against which Thomas could rush in his helpless hurt that had been building for ten years. It broke James' heart all over again recognizing in Thomas the same muzzled rage that had finally cracked open Miranda's breast in Charlestown. It was terrifying to realize, but James understood that even as he carried the burden of his own crimes, he had also been afforded a means of release that neither of his lovers had ever had.

The only thing he could think to offer was to wait for Thomas to shout himself hoarse and to stop racing through their small cottage, slamming drawers as he stuffed his spurned, useless treasures back into their rightful places.

James heard something break.

He bit his tongue.

Eventually Thomas had gone quiet, his pacing had slowed to a muted shuffle. In the sudden calm, James realized just how flat his own breathing had gone, as if not to disturb the very air around him, lest he tread where he wasn't supposed to. His entire body was straining to hear; he felt the dry slide of a drawer rasp over his skin, the sweep of the broom brushed the hair on his arms to attention. He blinked everytime he heard the bell-like ring of porcelain shards clinking together, as one might when light reflected into unsuspecting eyes.

When Thomas had restored the household to what he deemed an acceptable state, he had returned to the bedroom, where James was still kneeling exactly as he had fifteen minutes ago. Thomas was cradling one hand in the other and James spotted the scarlet bloom of a cut in his palm. Rather than speak, he had simply relaxed his arms, letting them fall open. Thomas had foregone the offered embrace and climbed into bed, lying down with his back pressed into the corner, and reached out. James had obliged and followed, gently tangling their feet together, and pulled Thomas' wounded hand to his mouth, the salt taste of blood bursting on his own bitten tongue.

They had stayed like that, simply breathing into the space between them and looking at each other, while Thomas stopped shaking and the light outside dimmed. James was fairly certain that at some point, Thomas had vanished into his own head again, the way he sometimes did. Night had long fallen outside. A moth had been bumping stupidly against the window pane when Thomas finally spoke.

"We didn't own things or have places to put them," he had said into the dark room, voice so carefully bland one might accuse it of coming from an empty grave.

And James had pressed his thumb into Thomas' palm and said nothing.

They hadn't moved or spoken again until morning, and James had fallen asleep with the taste of blood still in his mouth.

These days, if something he needed was in the habit of disappearing, James would add to his to-do list the finding of said quarry. He kept the running list on the dresser where Thomas could see, and the object in question would quietly find its way back to its accustomed place. James also bought another set of cutlery, adding it without commentary to their drawers, and there was now always a spoon when he needed it.

\---

James couldn't stop thinking about Thomas' request.

How his breathing had flattened, his eyes wide and hungry at the thought of the man James had been for ten years, ruthless and capable. And their love-making following that conversation had frankly been spectacular, even without inviting Flint into their bed; Thomas pliant and hard and eager to please as James had struggled to decide what to do to him first, and finding it absolutely no help that Thomas was equally enthused with all the options.

James saw clear incentives to making this work.

He had of course told Thomas how he had spent the past ten years. He didn't, however, make it a habit to talk about it often or to detail how he had felt commiting acts of cunning, violence, betrayal. Thomas had certainly heard the tales, and James couldn't for the life of him decide if it might make it better or worse to fill in what the history books got wrong. Since Thomas had never pressed, James had let it be - not least because Thomas was far from naive.

Thomas knew.

Thomas had seen his bruised knuckles and scabs the day after he had bashed a man's head in for insulting the Hamiltons. Thomas knew that his acerbic wit and dry humour weren't merely an affectation, the protective fierceness of his love not an act, but grounded in his heart's truest nature. But between the man he had been and the man he was, James thought, there must lie some difference. And if he was honest with himself, he was afraid to ask Thomas whether he had realized it and made peace with it – in which case Thomas would surely laugh at him for even entertaining this silly fright -, or if he willfully looked away to spare them both.

In some ways, it had been easier with Silver. It had never been  _easy,_ and James resolutely dismissed any thought of what they might have been, had things been different. But in the same way that one carried dirt onto one's own doorstep with less care than into a cherished place of worship, James had not had to hide Flint from Silver. It was Flint whom Silver had known first, and there had been a comfort in dropping the pretension. And yet again, there had been so many ways in which Silver had never known him, had never managed to  _understand_ , even when James had cut himself open in front of him - and that thought, too, James laid to an uneasy rest.

He knew the effect of assuming Flint's name fully and intentionally.

To be sure and calculating.

To do what was impossible to leave to weaker men.

To rain hell upon those in his path until, finding himself alone finally, he could shove a blood-slick hand down his breeches in a desperate attempt to rid himself of the heady rush of battle and to gentle the beast pacing under his skin. At a time when he had lost the part of himself that could enjoy Miranda's touch, that could be stirred to more than passive appreciation by the sight of a handsome man or draw genuine pleasure from anywhere at all, those rushed interludes had been the only times he could force his body into the capitulation of relief at all. It had never been particularly satisfying or even libidinous, but a way of blunting the blade's edge he had walked.

In battle he was clear-headed and footsure.

Faced with Thomas' request for a taste of Flint, James felt anything but.

He immediately rejected the idea of introducing his unbridled rage, his carnage and cruelty into their bedroom. He plain couldn't bear the thought. And he wasn't convinced it was what Thomas had asked for, either – or at least he hoped so. Since the book Thomas had been reading outlined Flint as a menacing yet debonair figure, James figured that might be a good place to start.

Try as he might, however, he seemed unable to find the right angle to accomodate Thomas' wish.

Unlike the Hamiltons, James had never been particularly skilled at seduction. He had learnt to read the cues of a like-minded man on a ship, had learnt to be direct enough to permit those encounters. Miranda and Thomas had eventually taught him to express his needs more candidly than James had ever thought possible. On a good day he might even agree with Thomas' fondly mocking remarks upon James' romantic streak.

Blunt and hungry and honest, he could do. Artfulness seemed doomed to slip forever through his fingers like so much sand and seawater.

The fact remained that despite his best efforts to pretend otherwise, Flint had only ever been an amplification of things that usually remained buried in James McGraw, and he had yet to unearth a shred of the smooth persuasion that had seemed to come to both Miranda and Thomas naturally in matters of the flesh.

He had commandeered ships, visited death upon his own crew and incited rebellion.

He had never tried to use Flint as a way of enticing someone into his bed, and everytime he approached Thomas to try, the suggestive remarks and dark innuendo turned to ashes in his mouth, feeling awkward and unwieldy. Thomas was gifted with the ability of saying the filthiest things in the most casual way, making James' ears burn as he went about some mundane task and was left stewing in his arousal until the opportunity arose to act upon it.

In lieu of a flirtatious turn of phrase, James decided to establish a general mood instead, in the hopes that it would make the right words and gestures flow. Dangerous and brooding, yet inviting, seemed like a good direction to angle for.

One evening, while Tomas was still running errands in town, James positioned their most menacing armchair with its back to the window. Come sunset, the effect was rather striking: the dying light limned all edges with liquid gold, picking them out of the room's obscurity like blades. His hair bound back in a tight queue, mustache curled just so, James assumed position facing the door, knees wide, hands resting imperiously to either side. He was achingly hard in anticipation.

James wasn't entirely sure what he should say, but he quite liked to think of himself motioning commandingly at the space between his spread thighs with a gem-encrusted hand. He was rather enchanted with the idea of Thomas' surprised and pleasure-flushed face, how he would lick his lips beholding James' mighty erection – which would stand to proud and well-timed attention just as Thomas entered the room, of course. If words failed him, James thought, a roguish sneer and a slight widening of his regal stance should suffice to communicate his expectations. Thomas would sink, worshipful, to his knees and wait while James unbuttoned his own breeches, no touching. Or maybe they would already be half-undone by the time Thomas made his entrance, giving a tempting glimpse of the bountiful rewards Thomas would receive if he expressed his adoration sufficiently. James might even touch himself, long, tight, languid strokes while Thomas had to watch and battle his impatience before James finally held out his cock for him to taste, allowing only kitten licks at first. Maybe he'd wait for Thomas to start begging before letting him swallow it down the first time.

And then James would receive the sucking of a lifetime and make Thomas ride him to within an inch of his life, and Thomas would come so hard he cried, cock bouncing untouched between them. The afterglow was going to be fantastic. Thomas would be at a loss for words for once, boneless with pleasure in the embrace of his lover's strong arms, overwhelmed with how perfectly sated he was and how cleverly James had orchestrated it all. James imagined long slow kisses.

An hour and a half after setting himself up, James' cock had long lost interest – the spring of his lust-addled youth did lie a few decades behind him, after all - and he had nodded off in the now-complete darkness of the room, squashing the careful flourish of his mustache against the arm chair's wing. His stomach was growling too, since he hadn't thought to eat first.

After another hour, he was startled awake by Thomas tripping over a loose floorboard as he arrived home, and spilling an armful of papers across the room, cursing more colourfully than might be expected of a lord. James had rushed to light candles and help Thomas collect the papers, casting a disgruntled glance at his would-be throne, now merely an old armchair again. He fixed the floorboard right away.

If it was impossible to summon the character of a dashing Captain Flint to aid in his seduction, James thought desperately, maybe he could get acceptable results by trying out new ways of bringing Thomas pleasure, something dangerous and thrilling.

He discarded the idea of using a knife. Turning it over and over in his hands it kept returning to a position aimed to maim or kill. James knew he was capable of the tightest precision, were he to set the edge to someone's skin – but he kept getting distracted by his own thoughts and decided to leave it, for now.

A gun, unloaded of course, might provide the requisite amount of illusory danger. There was a thrill in picturing himself making Thomas fellate the barrel. But no matter how often James imagined it, in his fantasies he would sooner or later hold it against Thomas' head, and the image of Miranda would flash unbidden through his mind, his stomach churning powerfully. No, he'd forego the firearms until further notice.

Last was the idea of restraints. Thomas had tied him up a few times back in London, and James had liked it well enough. He was fairly certain he could pull it off – his life at sea had certainly given him a thorough knowledge of knots. So one hazy evening, as they lay in bed early with the explicit purpose of fucking themselves to exhaustion after an idle Sunday, James whispered the suggestion into Thomas' ear. Thomas stilled for a moment, but then he kissed James and whispered his agreement back.

James carefully tied his wrists to the bedposts and abandoned the undertaking immediately when it turned out that it brought on vigorous memories of being restrained in Bethlem. There were no more attempts at pleasure that night, James letting Thomas pace until he calmed down. When Thomas returned to bed and gratefully accepted an embrace, James frowned at himself where Thomas couldn't see in the darkness, while Thomas sighed in frustration.

James had, finally, run out of ideas.

\---

Thomas was wearing James' clothes when James returned home.

He was early; just a half hour ago the man whose table he was to repair had decided that a folded-up square of paper would do after all to fix the wobble. James had taken one look at the bloodshot eyes and red nose of his client, and deduced that his payment had likely just been washed down the man's throat in the form of a cup or three of liquor. Overall, business was going decently, so James had decided to pack up for the rest of the day.

The clouds were like a dark cover above the brilliantly colourful horizon. James could see them rolling above, promising rain to come. He did not hurry, though; the rains were distant yet. Passing a wooded bend in the road, he startled a scattering of rabbits. He watched as they sped a brief distance before settling down once more.

Once home, he removed his boots and set aside the leftover piece of wood he had taken home to whittle into an idle figurine later. Another wave to add to the ocean expanding sedately on their mantle. He rubbed at his brow and took stock of what was still in their pantry.

Dinner, scrap wood and tired kisses were on his mind as he made his way to the bedroom.

That was how he found Thomas, mostly-dressed in the shirt and trousers James had worn when he had been brought to the plantation.

Thomas had just finished buckling the belt when he looked up and froze.

"Oh," he said.

"I was done early," was all James offered, and let his eyes sweep along Thomas' body.

The trousers were a little too short, tightly hugging his groin – which had a needy, half-ready look about it - because the waist wasn't high enough on him. His thighs didn't quite fill them, now that he wasn't subjected to hard physical labour anymore. The shirt sleeves lacked some of their usual fullness for the cuffs to stretch down to his wrists. He was wearing only one sock.

He looked patently ridiculous.

James found himself almost tearfully enamoured.

He also found himself immediately and desperately hard.

"I wasn't aware you'd kept them," he finally said.

Thomas shrugged. Even if he was taller than James and nearly as strong, his neck wasn't as thick, and the unbuttoned collar allowed a lovely view of his collarbones. He raised the crook of his arm to his face and, burying his nose in his elbow, inhaled deeply.

"They don't much smell like you anymore," he observed. "Or like gunpowder. Or salt."

 _Or blood_ , James thought.

"And that's a bad thing?" he asked out loud.

Thomas looked up. His face was burning now, but there was a brutal honesty in his eyes.

"When you first arrived at the plantation and they gave you your uniform, I kept these," he explained. "When you were not with me, I'd sometimes press them to my face and imagine that I could reach through time and go where they had aquired their smell, their stains, the threadbare patches. I'd been locked up for so long, the fact that I could tell the reality of the outside world on them, that I could experience it with my senses, even handed down and faded... God, James. Not just you, but the possibility of the entire world itself, open for our taking."

"And yet here we are," James said, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice. "Pretending to be distant relatives to everyone else, a carpenter and a lettered man for hire."

He regretted his words immediately when Thomas' face fell.

Thomas took a step back.

"I'm sorry," he said finally. "I don't know what to say. You told me once to leave it well alone. And here I am again, forcing the matter. I'm making light of how you've suffered and made others suffer for ten years, all in my name, and here I go, just..." He gestured vaguely at himself, the hems falling short of his wrists, his hands that were softening again after leaving the plantation, the way his cock jutted rude and half-hard beneath James' silver-studded belt. "As is if it were nothing but some lewd fantasy with no meaning beyond my enjoyment." His mouth worked for a moment, as if desperately turning over the half-formed words that he tried to fit into an acceptable shape. Finally, his jaw relaxed again, shoulders sinking just so. "I should be ashamed, and I apologize."

James had to stop himself from rushing to sweep Thomas up, to press against him until all foolish words were crowded out of the space gaping between them. But they needed to talk about this, he needed to  _know_ , and for that he had to give Thomas the air to breathe.

"Never that," James said firmly and contented himself with taking a mere step towards his lover. "Never shame, Thomas. You never asked for the misery I've sown, the innocents I've killed and people I've betrayed. We've talked about this. I know this. I see you mourning it, even while you act as if I had done no wrong in my life and deserved your devotion."

He halted and became aware of his fidgeting hands, the incessant twisting of his rings around his fingers. He forced them to still and took another step towards Thomas, seeking his eyes.

"Whatever it is you want, it's not the blood, is it?" James saw something twitch about Thomas' jaw and knew he was right. His voice dropped lower, willing himself to coax calmly. "Tell me what you  _need_ , Thomas."

Thomas held his gaze.

"Dominion," he said finally, through a tight throat, eyes narrowed. "I think of you commanding a ship and razing towns to the ground and refusing to bow to any government that presumes to demand reparations from a skeleton whose bones it picked clean itself. As if the gallows and gilded cages could supply what its ugly nature cannot: legitimacy."

Thomas blinked rapidly.

"Meanwhile I can't – I still haven't -" He stopped to compose himself. "I still haven't entirely regained sovereignty over my own mind. I still have spells where my own body will banish me from the realm that is my flesh and blood and bones. How could I not be panting after the spectre of a man that ruled his chosen hunting grounds for a decade, out of the sheer strength of his will and competence?"

James' fingertips felt heavy, as if filled with lead. They dragged at him, demanding he lower himself right this instant. He could feel his heartbeat in every part of himself.

Before Thomas could find another word of ill approval towards his own state, James finally allowed himself to step right up to him. He tilted his head up, letting his nose rest alongside Thomas' - just for a moment, breathing him in. His hands found Thomas' between them.

Thomas' eyes crinkled sweetly when he realised what James was doing.

James pulled the ring from his little finger and slid it onto Thomas'. It didn't fit quite as tightly, but not so much as to be bothersome. He took his time moving the second ring. He watched himself slowly, slowly pushing it onto Thomas' ring finger, until it rested almost at the knuckle. Gripped by a sudden fit of lust-fueled mischief, he moved it up again, just so, and pushed it back down, repeating the crude gesture a few times. He felt the warm exhale of a snort against his cheek and bit back an imbecilic smile of his own.

"Can't have a man of your rank walking around without his hard-earned finery, Captain," he said, hearing himself how the sound rumbled in his chest, and raised Thomas' bejewelled knuckles to his lips.

Without another word, James lowered himself to his knees and waited.

There was a long pause. James didn't cast his eyes downward, but kept them focused straight ahaid, willing himself to await and accept whatever happened next. If what Thomas needed was dominion and Thomas' own mind and flesh were not ready, then James would do his best to offer himself up in their stead.

In a way, he felt grateful – and guilty. Having failed so utterly in conjuring a fantasy of Flint that he could present to Thomas, here was the decision taken out of his hands for now, and the relief that flooded him was accompanied by a degree of self-loathing.

His thoughts were thankfully interrupted when a hand sank into his hair and fingers mapped the shape of his scalp before tilting his face up. Thomas' mouth was slightly parted.

"Don't move," Thomas said and James' chest flattened on a harsh exhale. Thomas' voice had gone deep and decisive, almost dismissive, and he disappeared from James' field of vision.

James grew keenly aware of his surroundings, senses sharpened by anticipation. There was an uneven edge between the floorboards that dug into the vulnerable gap at the bottom of his knee cap. His shirt rubbed across his taut nipples with every breath. The way the light filtered into the room, grown dusky between the brilliance of the setting sun and the dark velvet of heavy clouds roiling overhead.

He heard Thomas move behind him. Footsteps trailed out of the bedroom. There was a rustle of fabric. A gentle thudding sound, followed by another; heels treading softly on the worn floor. When Thomas stepped back into view, the boots he had put on served to somehow soften the incongruity of the clothes' fit.

Thomas' shoulders were squared in his best approximation of a parade rest. James swallowed the urge to offer a correction of his stance – no matter the time and distance he put between London and himself, his Navy years had never truly left him and even now he would regularly find himself falling back into old patterns. This was certainly not the time.

"Hands behind your back." Thomas' voice drew him back to the present and James complied unthinkingly. "Look at me."

Thomas had done up the single button of his shirt and James briefly mourned the loss of the view. In the evening light, Thomas' blonde hair was a golden nimbus around his head, curling like laurels about his ears. The deep brown of the shirt looked like dried blood.

"I take it you know why you've been brought to my cabin," Thomas continued.

James licked his lips. They hadn't discussed which way to play this.

"I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about," James rasped. His head was tilted back by a warm, dry hand at his jaw, firmly but not painfully so.

"Do not play the ingenue with me," Thomas said. "I will have you know that I make it a habit to read the logs of the ships I take. I'm well aware who you are."

Ah.

James' mind worked at the pieces he was given, fitting them into a shape he was familiar with.

"Then you'll know that I'm not easily impressed," he said with as much bravado as he could imagine mustering. He envisioned the shape of a vessel he had captained, now taken in battle by a pirate at whose mercy he found himself. "And that your hold on this situation is tenuous at best."

Thomas' eyes narrowed slightly. They were not blue anymore. Day had descended to that fugue state in which all hues lost their identity and blended into pure value; warm, anonymous grays.

"A rich boast coming from a hostage," Thomas responded with a haughty look. "I'm not sure you even know by which end to hold a sword."

_Ah._

Not a captain, then. Not even a pirate, or a merchant sailor. James adjusted his posture just so – a subtle weight shift, his arms tense in a less anticipatory way. A little more vulnerable, a little less ready to fight back. The movement caused Thomas' fingertips to drag, barely noticeable, across his jaw, catching on the hint of stubble on his skin. James swallowed, feeling the weight of Thomas' gaze on his throat.

He found his mind a trembling thing, caught between the sudden and overwhelming desire to relinquish the absolute control he had fought to hold onto for a decade, to let things come to him at exactly the pace Thomas deigned to give them to him - and the desperate wish to puzzle out exactly what it was Thomas was playing at, so he could anticipate his next five steps and preemptively mold himself into whatever was required to ensure Thomas' needs were met.

It took James a moment to notice that Thomas was still looking at him, almost hesitantly so under his hooded eyes – waiting for him to take the next step in this blind dance they were dancing.

James raised his chin, turning his head away from Thomas just so, almost-coincidentally tilting his jaw more firmly into Thomas' fingertips.

"So what are you planning to do with me?" he asked, and hoped, he  _prayed_ -

Thomas exhaled harshly and something settled in his face.

_There._

James felt the shift reverberate within his own body. Thomas' grip moved to his chin.

"I am here to ensure your cooperation from this moment forward," Thomas said. His voice went straight through James, swept aside every thought on its ruthless conquest of his body until it settled purring in his flesh, right where his balls were joined to the rest of him. "How pleasantly you'll spend the rest of our voyage, if and when you'll be released to your family, what liberties you will be granted under my command..."

James allowed a soft groan to escape his mouth when Thomas' thumb came to rest in the dip just beneath his lower lip, and he felt triumph at the way Thomas' pupils dilated at the sound.

"All that depends on whether you can convince me that you can be trusted to follow orders," Thomas finished and, without further ado, pushed the tip of his thumb into James' mouth.

Not wasting so much as the duration of a thought, James' eyes fluttered shut as he leant in to suck the entire finger down. A strangled noise escaped Thomas and James had to fight not to smile around the intrusion. He forced himself to keep his face appropriately demure, as far as that was possible while sucking someone else's thumb, wishing for the wider stretch of a cock.

A second hand alighted on his cheek, the both of them cradling his lower jaw while the thumb joined its twin in James' mouth. James whined around them. There was nothing fabricated about his reaction, this time.

The tips of Thomas' remaining eight fingers pressed dents below the edge of his jaw. James could feel the slightest hint of his nails, eight crescents lingering at the brink of awareness.

"Look at you," Thomas said above him and James had to force himself to open his eyes to look up into his awe-struck face. "You're not in need of much convincing, are you?"

In the back of his mind James' thoughts snagged on the inconsistency, remembering how  _he_  had been the one supposed to do the convincing, just one sentence ago. But Thomas' fingers felt like home in his mouth, and he wasn't about to offer comment. Not that he was able to, anyway.

Thomas' thumbs slipped out of his mouth, trailing a wake of spit that cooled rapidly on James' skin. James' intertwined hands twitched behind his back to latch onto the buttons of Thomas' breeches, right at eye level; with how snugly they had ridden up on Thomas' taller frame, James thought he could just about make out the blunt swell of the head.

He looked up at Thomas with what he hoped was an expression somewhere between frightened by his own keenness and plain frightened. Seeing the sharp cut of arousal across Thomas' face, however, wiped his own mind blank for a second.

"Whatever it takes to ensure my release," James panted, and shuffled forward.

He had expected Thomas to chastise him for presuming to make such direct advances without being given permission – back in London, he certainly would have. But all James received was a hand coming to lay on the side of his neck as he pushed his cheek against the straining bulge in Thomas' breeches. His nostrils flared as he inhaled deeply. This close, James could smell the sharp musk of Thomas' sweat and his arousal through the fabric, mixed with the fine dust of a day spent out and about.

"I'm a reasonable man," Thomas said softly, and his fingers slid up James' neck to rub the earlobe gently, before moving up into his hair. "I only take what is put in front of me, like a treasure-loaded floating fortress entering  _my_  hunting grounds. Or a handsome thing like you, dressed so obviously to entice."

There was nothing enticing about James' plain clothes, rough and worn, but James' eyes closed anyway as he was petted, feeling so carefully assessed and taken stock of. He wanted to steer things into the right direction, wanted so desperately to think ahead and make it all work; but God, to  _be_  steered. To hear again the assurance of being obeyed in Thomas' deep voice.

"Why don't we start with you showing me what you're willing to offer," Thomas continued and began to undo his buttons with the hand that wasn't pulling James' head away from his groin. James mourned the loss of contact but found his suffering rewarded when Thomas' cock fell out of his breeches, almost close enough to brush James' nose with is glistening tip.

Silence; Thomas inert while James hungered on his knees before him. It took James a moment to realise Thomas had lost the thread again and was waiting for his reaction. James knew he should be more hesitant, should make just a bit of a show of being intimidated by the prospect of what was going to happen; but with his objective so readily in front of him, James found in him naught but bold purpose.

"Let me," he breathed and delighted in the way Thomas' cock jumped as his hot breath brushed its taut skin. He was so  _close._  "Please."

Thomas didn't say anything, just guided his head closer.

One of the first things they had discovered when they first fell into bed with each other was how singularly enjoyable James found the act of sucking another man's cock. Not that he hadn't liked it before, but it had been shameful and furtive, something he couldn't obviously relish in front of his hasty partners. Thomas had coaxed it out into the open and brazenly praised James, in great detail even, for his mouth.

Never had James been taught in such manner the ways of pleasing any one particular lover. He had been told how well he took it, but it had always been the impersonal praise bestowed upon a man enduring unpleasantness with minimal complaint. And never before had he received a run-down of specifics, such as Thomas pointing out which uses of James' tongue he found the most agreeable; or how well it pleased him when James leaned down to nose at his balls and suck at the sensitive skin; how he liked James taking them into his mouth – which James relished, since they filled his mouth nicely and made such rewarding smacking sounds if Thomas fucked him right after.

James took pride in having received such thorough instruction; as if he were a musician that had been taught the playing of one willful instrument, the skills of which weren't applicable to any other. There was an accomplishment of its own in specificity.

Thomas had managed to convince him, over the course of weeks, that James' needy sounds were perfectly suitable for his ears. James remained less vocal than his lover most of the time, but he couldn't keep the wet smacks and slurps, the groans and hums of satisfaction, from escaping as he feasted.

By the time Thomas stilled James' eager ministrations, James grew aware that lone, fat rain drops had started to tap on the window panes. The air felt cool on his boiling skin, especially where it was wetted down with his own spit; there was always so much of it, but these days it caught in his beard rather than run freely down his chin to his throat. James groaned and tried to push his face towards Thomas' cock again, but Thomas huffed a laugh and took a step back. He even removed his hands from James' head, the bastard.

"No more of that," Thomas said and casually took himself in hand, letting the spit-slicked length of it slide through his fingers. James watched the head of his cock emerge between his fore and middle fingers, watched the progress to the base with its wiry curls, and the reverse stroke. When Thomas' fingers squeezed all the way back to the tip, beads of clear fluid emerged to mingle with the saliva still liberally coating it, and James mourned the terrible waste as they dripped, untasted, to the floor.

"If you would only let me continue -" James began but a sharp look from Thomas cut him off.

"I won't have one of my men try to curry my favour so wantonly," he chastised James.

"Your men?" James repeated, blinking.

Thomas halted – took his hand off his cock, eyes shifting to the side. After a moment of clearly ordering is thoughts, he found James' eyes again.

"A hostage," he said firmly. "But if you're in a mood to talk back, maybe it's time to remove the face-to-face aspect from all this, since it's clearly giving you the wrong ideas." Thomas stepped deftly around James and pulled the covers off the bed, tossing them on the floor in front of him. "Hands and knees."

James complied. His pleasant daze was at war with the need to make up for his interruption; he should not have said anything. The clockwork of his mind was back to ticking away feverishly once more. He tried to burrow back into the hazy state of submission.

After what felt like an unbearable eternity, Thomas came to kneel beside him. James was regretful to see he had tucked himself back into his trousers again, but the head still peeked over the waistband, glossy and ripe as a polished plum. James' mouth watered for it, but he forced himself to keep his mind focused on what was to come. Thomas was holding the vial of oil they kept by their bed.

"Given your obvious enjoyment of my cock," Thomas said, pausing briefly to unstopper the vial with his teeth, "I presume you'll be more than amenable to this next part as well. Am I wrong?"

James shook his head, eyes downcast.

Thomas set the vial aside carefully and slid his hands, all undeterred focus, around James' hips to the front of his breeches, tearing open the buttons casually. James hissed through his teeth at the relief of feeling his erection spring free; his position made it fall heavily below him and tug at him as if trying to draw his attention with its weight, its obvious purpose. Denying him the mercy of even a brief touch, Thomas pulled James' waistband down to his mid-thighs.

"Remove them," he ordered quietly and reached for the vial again.

James followed the order as best he could, awkwardly shuffling to peel the trousers off his legs, taking the socks right along. It didn't help in the least that his needy prick kept bumping into his own thighs. Stripped to only his shirt, he resumed position. James' belt fell with a heavy thud from Thomas' waist to the ground and the sound, the accompanying clink of the buckle, made James' skin twitch in anticipation.

Thomas' preparation of him was practiced yet perfunctory. He did not linger as he usually liked to nor reach around to sweeten the first stretch. James failed to stifle a covetous moan when two fingers entered him right away, all the way down to the base. He was well-used to this part, so it didn't hurt, though it burned. There was a thrill in it happening without warning, expecting him to take it without complaint. Knowing that were he actually some prim and proper ponce about to be fucked for the first time, it  _would_  hurt.

"I expected nobility to be more delicate," Thomas said conversationally, rubbing at James' rim from the inside. "Yet here you are, wanton as a dock-side hussy. I wonder if I shall even return you at all! Would high society want you back, once they knew how shamelessly you moan when any ill-begotten ruffian proposes to fuck you? Would they still pay your ransom, knowing how you drooled all over yourself when you gobbled up my cock?"

A shudder ran through James and he cried out as Thomas pressed his fingers firmly against that bundle of nerves inside him. His face burned at Thomas' words, and yet he wanted to laugh. No, civilization had very thoroughly rejected them already, that spectre held no more terror.

There was its own glory in it as James pushed back against Thomas' fingers, imagining the thorough fucking he was surely about to receive. He reveled in how mortified any one of the powdered men in Thomas' salons would have been, seeing two of London's finest minds love and use each other like this. Reveled in the filthy details of every single thing they had done to each other, everywhere in this house, within these four walls where with each other at least, they sought to banish shame wherever it reared its misshapen head.

Society had sought to destroy them and it  _couldn't_ , and every time he went down on his knees, everytime he spread Thomas out on the bed, every time he opened his mouth for Thomas, every single time he was alive to feel his heart thrill at the sight of Thomas, was an act of quiet rebellion unto itself.

James groaned and ducked his head as if to press his forehead to the ground, but Thomas laid a hand beneath his throat to prevent him. There was no strength in it, a mere tap against his windpipe with the knuckles of his be-ringed hand, but it was enough.

"I could join your crew," James panted, casting a glance at Thomas over his shoulder.

Thomas' fingers stilled as he blinked at James. Then he guffawed and pulled them out with a rude squelch. James clenched down on nothing, mourning how empty he felt once more. When Thomas nudged his knees apart to position himself between them, he felt a hungry, anxious flutter in his lower belly. He hadn't been given more than two fingers this whole time, and the stretch of Thomas' cock was going to be considerable. He was less thick than James, but without question more sizable than a mere two fingers. The thought of the initial pain made his own cock jump against his belly.

"Could you, now?" Thomas purred and laid his length between James' cheeks, just making his presence known. James knew he should try harder to be patient, to play along with the coy push-and-pull, but his nerves were splintering rapidly. He gritted his teeth and pushed back, and above him he heard Thomas sigh and give in.

A thumb held him open and he felt the blunt press of the tip when Thomas guided it to his entrance. God, any moment...

"Prepare to board," Thomas said under his breath and pushed forward.

James' forearms collapsed and he had to bury his mouth behind them, blood rushing to his head with his rear in the air. He hoped his groans were going to be enough to cover his wheezing for air, both out of amusement and of exasperation; not to mention the stretch of the glorious cock that was currently halfway up his arse.

The glorious cock that had stopped its progress, and was in fact withdrawing.

James threw a hand behind him to stop Thomas from pulling out. Thomas stilled.

"Did I prepare you too little?" he asked, voice soft and worried, and God, James wanted to weep with both laughter and need over this frustrating man he loved. "Are you – are you crying?"

"No," James ground out through gritted teeth, once he was sure he had wrestled back control over his voice and was not going to let Thomas notice he had been laughing at him.  _Prepare to board!_  Heavens have mercy, he was going to perish before he ever came today.

Thomas' hands had started stroking his back soothingly and James pushed himself back onto his elbows. Thomas let a hiss escape his teeth when the movement made him sink deeper again. James screwed his eyes shut for a moment, then flexed his thighs to move back further, feeling hands skimming across his back. When his rear met Thomas' groin, James felt his balls come to nestle against Thomas', which were still slightly sticky with James' spit, and he sighed in relief. He cracked open an eye to peer over his shoulder at Thomas, whose lips were parted as he watched the place where they were joined.

"I believe," James said, giving a light squeeze, "that we were discussing the terms of my recruitment."

Thomas groaned and shifted his weight forwards, one hand grasping at James' hip, the other at his shoulder as he steadily ground deeper.

"What makes you think I'd want a spoilt thing like you on my ship?" he replied, finding with unerring accuracy that spot inside James' body.

James arched his back as prettily as he could manage –  _pretty_  being a word he had never much associated with himself but which seemed appropriate for a  _spoilt thing_  – and moaned in what he hoped was the same manner.

"You do seem rather fond of spoiling me," James sighed and was rewarded with a gentle thrust.

"Is that so?" Thomas was panting above him but he was still upright, the heat of his breath still too far to be felt upon James' sweat-slick back. His movements remained unnervingly composed. "Pray tell, how have you come to that conclusion?"

"Mmmh." James focused on bearing down in time with Thomas' movements, hoping to coax him into a rougher pace. His tongue felt yielding and loose in his mouth. "You could have done any number of awful things to me, Captain. Yet here you are," he stuttered at a particularly well-aimed jab to his prostate, but he let himself babble right on, "entertaining me with conversation, and now you are even letting me enjoy your rather impressively sized -"

A harsh thrust shut him up right quick, and James shouted at the loud slap of the impact, sending one of his hands skittering beneath him. Well, he  _had_  laid it on a bit thick, but thick was just what he was in the mood for, and thick was what filled him at so decisively a pace now.

"Your insolence is charming," Thomas admitted. After that initial, punitive thrust he was still withholding the force he must know James truly needed, even if the speed was more to James' liking. "But I don't think I should appreciate it in one of my men. You'd have to take orders well, without complaint nor back talk."

"What would happen if I didn't?"

 _Flogged, beaten, castigated,_  James thought. And he was aware that that was the lieutenant in him talking, for his harsh punishments had never endeared him to a pirate crew. Pirates were used to their own form of democracy and had scant love for tyrants.  _Without complaint nor back talk._  His lip curled bitterly at the thought.

"I should have you assigned to all the most unpleasant duties," Thomas replied, maintaining his faster but still unvarying pace. "So that every moment you had to scrub and toil, you'd remember how much more pleasantly you could be spending those hours."

"Spend them in your bed, you mean."

James' brows were so desperately furrowed he thought that they should leave grooves in his skull, there for everyone to see once he finally left this mortal world. If Thomas did not fuck him harder soon, that day might come sooner rather than later.

"Enough of this chatter," Thomas said and there was a note of rancour in his voice. His hands dove beneath James. James arched up towards them, desperately awaiting a touch on his neglected cock, which was so desolately slapping against his belly with every thrust.

But instead of that merciful touch, James merely felt his shirt being rucked up roughly. It was pushed up to his armpits and Thomas' hands alighted on his stomach. He could feel his prick leaving sticky traces across Thomas' knuckles every time he was jolted forward, while those hands were busy squeezing at his flesh.

"Look how soft you are," Thomas pointed out and James felt his own heartbeat in his blood-flushed face. It was true that the time since he had left piracy behind had relaxed his body somewhat. His middle had aquired a slight plumpness, not enough to be very noticeable, but Thomas loved it and would insist on showering it with attention at every opportunity. James suffered the scrutiny with delighted embarrassment. "You would not make it to even one of the crows nests!"

James had intended to suggest Thomas abandon fondling his softest parts in favour of fondling his hardest, but that last taunt was too much to leave unanswered.

"One of them?" James smirked across his shoulder at Thomas. "What a singular vessel your ship must be, that it has more than the one! Do tell -"

He didn't get further because a hot, moist hand clamped over his mouth. It wasn't firm enough to hurt, but it was sudden and accompanied by the harshest change of pace yet. Thomas bent down to press the entire length of his body to James', and his other arm wrapped around him, grasping his opposite hipbone and trapping James' flushed cock against his own stomach.

James thought he must surely go mad from the sudden onslaught but all he could do was whine against the fingers over his mouth. He had finally run out of words. Instead he simply levered himself backwards as best he could to meet Thomas' body with equal force. He thanked the Heavens for Thomas' coordination, even in this state, because he received a jolt to his prostate on each stroke, and the edges of his vision began to flicker.

Thomas' breath was hot in his ear.

"You talk too much," he grunted on a particularly savage push. There was a strange pitch to his voice but James could barely focus anymore. Two of Thomas' fingers had slipped past his lips as every part of Thomas sought to encompass James. "Hostage or not, see if I won't make you climb the – swab the..." He faltered for a second, breathing harshly into James' hair as his body laboured and strained. "The royal... mizzen... God,  _fuck_... jib mast?"

And James bowed his head, fingers slipping from his mouth and smearing traces up his cheek, stomach contracting almost painfully as he laughed and groaned and sighed and laughed, and spilled and spilled beneath them.

His legs gave way and his thighs fell open wide, until he was more sitting than kneeling, gathered half into Thomas' lap. The moment he had begun laughing, Thomas' arm had wrapped more tightly around his middle, and his thrusts had taken on a vindictive strength, short and angled upwards now.

"Don't -" Thomas nearly sobbed in his ear and the sound twisted James' heart cruelly because it sounded only half born of pleasure, and half of despair. "Why do you – why couldn't you - I can't -" Thomas' fingers were digging harshly into his skin. James' ears were ringing with the obscene slapping noise of their coupling; his softening cock smacked wet and helpless against his thighs. He danced on the edge of overstimulation, both relishing and dreading the relentless drive of Thomas' flesh. "Oh, James –  _James_  – "

But then Thomas moaned wretchedly and buried his face in James' hair, cries of anguish coalescing into hiccupping chortles until James began to wonder faintly if he had succeeded in doing what the world never had; if he had finally broken Thomas.

They collapsed into each other.

It all blended together; the wet, twitching warmth of Thomas spending inside him and the pattering sound of the rain against the window and the ticklish puffs of breath in his ear, as Thomas sighed and giggled and moaned into his hair. James lay trembling beneath him, feeling curiously weak as if every bone had been shaken out of its socket by half a finger’s breadth, submitting without complaint to the pliable weight of Thomas molding to his back.

Before long James could feel himself going soft and content all over. Muscles that had tensed relaxed into the pleasant laziness that followed a good fuck. Thomas, however, did not stop shaking; in fact, what James had supposed was merely a novel combination of aftershocks and laughter soon turned into full-body tremors.

Taking care not to do it too abruptly, James rearranged them until he lay half on his side, half on top of Thomas, chest to back with Thomas' cheek pressed into the bed covers. He whispered Thomas' name but was awarded only with a slightly more violent shake of Thomas' head.

It took him a few more breaths before he realized that Thomas wasn't cold, or afraid, or grief-struck.

He was shaking mad.

Here was the rage again, compressed into so mortal a body, which had never been meant to hold so much of it. James felt a responding ember in the pit of his own stomach, that slumbering warmth ready to spring forth into a blaze again, but this was no place for it, at this moment. He had doused it in blood so often. Still, it made him want to burn towns to the ground again, knowing that as good a man as Thomas had been left to himself with that anger bouncing off the walls of his carnal prison, rattling and echoing uselessly around his ribs, never to be allowed relief.

There was so much of it, and no culprit at hand that was small enough to even notice the ferocity of his wrath. Only a guilty system that had found new ways of muzzling them both at last, and still had the gall to endure.

James wordlessly lifted his hand to Thomas' face, gently pressing it to his lips. Thomas hesitated and James had to nudge at his mouth again before he understood, and bit into the thick pad of flesh at the heel of James' palm. The pain was barely an inconvenience to James, but he wished secretly that the marks would last him to the grave. He didn't say anything, just nosed soothingly along Thomas' nape, the twitching space between his shoulderblades.

The shaking eventually lessened and Thomas released James' hand from his teeth, pressed soft, apologetic kisses to the abused skin. He hadn't drawn blood, James' thick callouses withstanding the force of his fury, but it was a close thing. James pulled up Thomas' shirt and rubbed his chest idly. The sparse blond hair felt so light beneath his abused palm it made James want to weep, that he could still perceive so small and delicate a thing.

"Thank you," Thomas said.

James hummed. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to throw you off, earlier. I was terribly out of character."

He could feel Thomas sigh rather than hear it.

"If you think being insufferably smart and eager to prove it is ever going to sour me on you, I'm sorry to disappoint. I had clearly not done my research properly. The subject matter is still beyond me." He huffed. "I couldn't organize a book in time to help me, either."

"You should find yourself a retired seaman," James suggested, nipping with a smile at Thomas' ear. "Some old salt who's spent time on a boat and knows a thing or two."

James could  _hear_ the smile like slow-dripping honey in Thomas' voice. "You think a seasoned sea dog like that would be interested in teaching a landlubber like me?"

"I'm sure you'd find ways to persuade him," James assured him. Thomas chuckled and James was sorely tempted to roll him over onto his back and lick the laughter right out of his mouth. Not now, though. His fingers resumed their idle exploration of Thomas' chest as he pressed his forehead into his nape.

He could feel the hot moisture of his breath catch between them as he spoke, voice soft and low.

"How are you feeling? Did it... do what it was meant to do?"

Thomas was quiet for a long time. Then he reached up, his jewelled hand clasping James'.

"It was good."

 _For what it was_ hovered unspoken in the room.

James hummed into Thomas' skin. Thomas moved one of the rings from his little finger back to James', but James wordlessly stayed his hand before he could return the second. He simply laced their fingers back together.

Letting his eyes stray to the window, James noticed that the rain had not yet let up. It had turned to a fine spray, catching the dying light like drops of fire against the dark sky. Weather for rainbows. He could see none, but were he to climb the roof, he might have.

Before long, James figured, he should probably get up and make supper. They would have to wash up, smelling of sex and sweat as they did. He had to do his nightly perimeter check, making certain all locks were well-secured. He had to count out again the bullets he kept with a musket and a tin of gunpowder under a loose floorboard. Thomas would likely spend some more time on his translations, or maybe look over those texts the apothecary had hired him to copy.

Before long, their peace might need adjustments to stave off the restlessness collecting in the corners of their home like so much dust.

But for now, it was good.

 

**Author's Note:**

> can you believe i was too shy to use the word "cock" in my writing before this happened
> 
> comments are appreciated and make me write faster ❤ thanks to everyone that enjoyed part 1!
> 
> come scream about black sails with me [on tumblr](http://squid-inspiration.tumblr.com/)!


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